


I was careful but nothing is harmless

by romans



Category: Frozen (2013)
Genre: AU, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-17
Updated: 2014-01-17
Packaged: 2018-01-09 01:03:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1139604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/romans/pseuds/romans
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>King Hans was a good man.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I was careful but nothing is harmless

**Author's Note:**

> prompt: frozen/druxy

It was agreed that King Hans was a good ruler, all in all. The people loved him, and the diplomats fawned at his feet and came away satisfied from their audiences. He was tall, and fair, and implacably just, and the gilt crown that graced his brow seemed to almost be an afterthought. They could find no fault with his prowess in battle, except that he was sometimes too calculating; but he had defeated the Witch Queen and ended her icy grasp on their lands, so his generals murmured to each other that his easy way with death was a strength. _Someone_ had to make the hard choices, after all.

There were rather a lot of hard choices to be made, when the Southern Isles attacked and had to be driven back. Overtaken. Conquered.

Hans sent flowers to the widows and to the mothers. He was a kind man.

He had three daughters, three little red-headed princesses, and he doted on them. They spent most of their time inside of the castle, under the stern care of an army of nurses and tutors, but their father always made time to take them around the gardens on ponies. Princess Else perched on his knee, sometimes, while he worked in his office. They scratched away contentedly beside the fire, Hans on his official documents, Else scribbling on whatever scraps she could find.

It was a most charming image, two fiery heads bent over their labors in perfect harmony.

Queen Anna was pregnant again, and this time they said it would be a boy. Her hair was strikingly white around her still-young face, and it gave her a grave air that she had been lacking before. But she was young still, and beautiful, and her parties were the talk of the North. Those stopped, after the war, but she always kept the palace doors open to all comers, be they wandering minstrels or visiting dignitaries from distant lands.

She seemed distracted, sometimes, and distant, but then she had not been raised to rule, not like her husband. Her reserve was suitable for a queen. _Icy_ , some said. _Regal_ , her friends replied. When she appeared in public, it was always on her husband’s arm, and his devotion to her was plain for all to see. It bordered on unseemly.

How lucky she was, they said, to have such a handsome, clever, loving husband.

There was an ice-cutter, a strange man from the mountains, who claimed to have known her once. She had changed, he would tell anyone who would listen, and not for the better. She wasn’t _his_ Anna. They scoffed and kicked him out of their pubs, hurling abuse. He was a strange poor man who had fallen in love with a fantasy.

Eventually he stopped coming to town. No one noticed, much, because of the War.

Sometimes the Prince Consort (he was a consort, but never mind it- they called him King) would visit the royal graves on the hill. The Witch Queen had been buried just outside of the graveyard, at her sister’s request. The king had never been able to refuse her anything, so he had cajoled the Church into placing the dead queen just outside of the hallowed grounds.

He forgave his enemies, even when they had tried to kill him. He was a saintly man.

This saintly man would visit the grave of the Witch Queen, solemnly and sadly, and hold his wife while she cried. Only, sometimes, when he thought no-one was looking, he would cradle Anna’s white head and then smile.

It was a private smile, and a ghoulish one, and it froze the hearts of the men who saw it.

They agreed amongst themselves, later, that they had misinterpreted his smile. Perhaps he had been crying. And even if King Hans had been smiling, well, it wasn’t a crime.

After all, no one was _perfect_.


End file.
